Thunder in Your Throat presents works by 11 international artists awarded the 2021 Berlin Senate’s work stipends in the visual arts. This joint group exhibition showcases their latest artistic productions, which engage in a dialogue providing insight into the diversity of their artistic perspectives and their potential for addressing current aesthetic and social issues.

What unites the featured artists is their preoccupation with contemporary culture, social grievances, the ongoing impacts of historical crimes, and emancipatory counter-movements while maintaining a highly unique artistic signature. Their work spans a wide range of media, including large-format paintings, sculptures, and objects, as well as immersive spatial installations, sound and video works, and performances. Together, they articulate a critical view of contemporary image politics, value creation mechanisms, economic inequality, and the exploitation of people and nature.

Transcending disciplinary boundaries and formal conventions, the artists united in this exhibition raise fundamental discussions on history, language, consumption, and bodies – through visually powerful and atmospherically intense works that expose sociopolitical practices and put them up for debate.

The title of the exhibition, Thunder in Your Throat, refers to a line from the song Formwela 3 by the U.S. jazz bassist, composer, singer, and songwriter Esperanza Spalding. The song is from her 2021 release, Songwright’s Apothecary Lab, a transdisciplinary collaborative project involving a variety of musicians and researchers named one of the best albums of the year by the New York Times. Combining therapeutic practices and artistic strategies of knowledge production, each of the 12 pieces is intended to have a specific healing effect on the listener – forming a musical pharmacy that can be used to feel more grounded, ease tension, or lift the spirits.

Discourse Program

Tuesday, April 12, 2022, 7 pm

Prekarisierung, Sorge und queere Schulden (Precarity, care and queer debt)

Lecture by Isabell Lorey (political scientist, professor for Queer Studies in Arts and Science, Academy of Media Arts Cologne)

In German

Thursday, April 28, 2022, 7 pm

Auction House. A performance about un-performance

Performance by and with Navild Acosta (artist and activist) and Fannie Sosa (artist and activist), with special guest Thioro Niang

In English

Publication

As part of the n.b.k. book series “Berlin”, a bilingual publication (German/English) is published by Walther und Franz König, Cologne, including a greeting by Klaus Lederer, a preface by Marius Babias as well as texts by Layla Burger-Lichtenstein, Nicoleta Esinencu, and Michaela Richter.